


Le Cimetière Marin

by godtiermeme



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Albino Dave, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blind Dave, Multi, Smoking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-25 13:36:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3812482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/godtiermeme/pseuds/godtiermeme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From all outward appearances, Dave Strider had it all.</p><p>Born into wealth and famed as an alternative music artist, he seemed to live in a world of opulence and luxury. Everywhere he went, he was the center of attention—people fought to talk to him. He lived amidst a flurry of what most people thought was carefree fame.</p><p>To those close to him, though, he was a dissatisfied artist who’d long since lost the passion he once had for his art.</p><p>To his half-sister and promotional manager, he was a guaranteed daily migraine.</p><p>To freelance artist and music fan Karkat Vantas, he was both a nightmare and an ethereal dream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Told from Karkat's point of view with Dave's viewpoint afterwards.  
> All quotes preceding each chapter are from [the poem this is named after](http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/fr/valery.daylewis.html) and all rough translations are my own. Please let me know if you see an issue in the translation!  
> Comments and feedback are welcome!

The first time I met Dave Strider—and I mean actually got to speak to him and not just watch him on stage—was late one New Year’s Day as I returned home from a visit with my friend, John. The first time I met Dave Strider, I literally ran into him and nearly impaled both of us on the white cane he was using.

“Shit,” was the first word I ever said to him—and I said it to him five times in a row. “Shit,” I yelled, “Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!” The first impression I made on him was more literal than most—I had been carrying a canvas I’d been experimenting with and most of the still-wet paint had come off on his jacket. So, naturally, “fuck” was the second word I said to him.

He, however, didn’t respond. He simply got back up and sighed. He ran his hand across the front of his jacket and noticed the paint. To my surprise, he shrugged it off. To an even greater surprise, he actually spoke to me. “You okay?” were his first words to me—words spoken with the most delicate touch of a southern accent.

“Hm? Yeah. Thanks…” I replied, shell-shocked.

“Cool.” He nodded and flipped his cane between his fingers a few times. “You’ve been painting?”

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry…” I muttered.

“No, that’s fine.” He fumbled around in his pocket for a moment before pulling out a business card. “I’ve actually been looking for someone to make cover art. If you’re interested, call.” With this said, he turned around and offered a casual wave as he began making his way down the sidewalk. “Or visit. Address is on the card.”

“I—Okay…” For a while, I stood there. I just stood and watched as he disappeared from view. I stood and took in what the hell had just happened. Had I really just been invited to provide art for Dave Strider? No, of course not! No, I reminded myself, he was merely interested in seeing my art. It wouldn’t be picked, though. Why would it? No, it wouldn’t.

Eventually, I gathered my wits about me enough to start walking home. All the while, though, I reminded myself that this was just a fluke. Of course I’d show up to offer my shitty art, but I wasn’t going to get the job. No, that job was for real artists—not some hobbyist with cheap acrylic paint and second-hand art class canvases.


	2. Midi le juste y compose de feux

**_Ce toit tranquille, où marchent des colombes,_ **  
**Entre les pins palpite, entre les tombes,**  
**Midi le juste y compose de feux…**

_The quiet roof, where the doves fly by,_  
_Between the palpitating pines, between the tombs,_  
_The fair noon creates light there…_

* * *

 

I arrived at Dave’s home at noon. I had passed by the home before but never paid much attention to it. At least, I didn’t think that someone as successful as Dave Strider would live in a commonplace row home. It didn’t stick out at all and it was the same size as all the others. I didn’t really think about it much, though, as I gathered my paintings and rang the doorbell.

As I waited, I continued to think about other things. I wondered why the paint was peeling off the door and why the shutters were near-thoroughly rotted. I mulled over the disparities between his lavish public persona and the pile of unread newspapers which sat decaying on the doorstep.

When he opened the door, even more questions popped into my mind.

The Dave Strider standing in front of me—his thinness more apparent than ever in the torn baseball shirt and jeans he wore—wasn’t who I watched in concert. He wasn’t even anywhere near that person. His hair was matted together, his face covered in faint stubble. Surely, I thought, this wasn’t the _real_ Dave Strider.

“You…” I paused. What was I supposed to say? After all, this couldn’t possibly be Dave Strider. This bastard looked no better than the beer-guzzlers who wandered through the streets at night. Yet, at the same time, he couldn’t be anyone else. “I met you yesterday, I think.” I mumbled. “My name is Karkat Vantas. You gave me your card. Something about album art?”

The man in the doorway nodded. He seemed to think about it for a moment before a look of mild recognition spread across his face. “Oh. Yeah… I didn’t actually think you’d show up, honestly.” He tugged at the collar of his shirt as he spoke. “But… I guess you can come in while you’re here?” With that said, he turned around and motioned for me to follow.

He led me inside and into a modest sitting room. He sat down on an old, stained couch and jabbed his finger at the torn armchair that he presumably wanted me to sit in. Despite the fact that there was a stain that looked a lot like old vomit, I obliged. As I sat down, I placed the canvases I’d brought with me on the coffee table between us.

After a few seconds, he picked up the samples.

This was the first time I saw his eyes.

He took off his usual shades and set them aside before pulling out a pair of thick glasses. From where I sat, I had a clear, vivid view. The pupils and irises were both tinged with a pinkish red. His left eye seemed to move out of sync with his right—the right would track across the painting one way and the left would slowly mirror the movements.

I didn’t say anything, though. Why would I? I’d only be pointing out something he already knew, something that—judging by the fact that he never appeared in public without his sunglasses—he was keen on hiding. Instead, I sat in silence. Watching.

He seemed particularly interested in a painting I brought in of an abandoned farmhouse—the last painting I’d brought with me. He stared at it for quite a while before setting it aside apart from the others. Then, turning to me, he broke the silence which had hung in the air for the past ten minutes. “I like them,” he shrugged. He rummaged around in his pocket and pulled out a carton of cigarettes. He pulled out two, offering one to me with one hand as he lit the other—which was already in his mouth—with the other. I politely refused and he offered another indifferent shrug before stuffing it back into the carton. “I’d be okay with you being on the team as a designer or whatever the hell you call the people who do art for bands.”

Another round of shellshock. I stared at him for a good two minutes before coming to my senses. “Yeah. Yeah! That would be great. When do I—?”

“Whenever,” Dave mumbled. “I don’t need anything right now, but you can do… whatever, I guess…”

“That’s fucking great!”

“Yeah, yeah.” He let forth a plume of smoke from his nostrils and waved dismissively. “So, what, why’re you so excited? You just really need the job or something?”

“What? Oh. No, I’m actually a fan of yours…” I answered vaguely. “I… I really like your music.”

Dave’s response—a snort of dejected laughter and a roll of his eyes—surprised me. His answer caught me completely off guard. “Yeah, well, at least someone likes the music.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Another snort of bitter laughter. “Nothing. Forget I even said that. Everyone does.” He plucked the cigarette from his mouth and crushed it into the ashtray perched precariously atop the cushions that formed the sofa’s backrest. “So, what? Why’re you sticking around? You want a sticker or something?”

“I—” I stopped. “You don’t need to be an ass about it, you know.”

“Jesus,” he sighed, “You don’t need to get so damned touchy about it.”

Some of the star-struck awe I’d been feeling began to wear off. A mild sense of annoyance came to replace it. “Are you always this fucking rude to everyone?”

“Yes.”

More of the bewildered wonder I had first felt when I met him came peeling away. “What? You don’t have anything better to do than sit in this garbage pit of a house and make fun of people who like your music?” I snapped.

“Nope.”

The pedestal I’d put him on started crumbling. Confusion and anger crept up on me. “Then keep your damned paintings!” I spat. “Fuck you! You’re just like any other famous, egotistical asswipe!”

For a moment, he paused. Then, he shrugged once more and replied with a flat, “Sure.”

At this point, I swiftly gathered as much as I could and left. I didn’t say a single word to him as I strode over the threshold and down the street. All the way back to my house, I stewed with disappointment and anger.

How was he so different from the person he seemed to be on stage? He was nowhere near the charismatic artist I’d seen before. There was nothing lavish about how he lived, yet every time I’d seen him perform he was dressed impeccably.

Was I just naïve? Did I really just expect to walk into his home and be greeted with enthusiasm and zeal? Maybe I was as stupid as I thought I was. Maybe the dejected whispers of my thoughts as I drifted off were right…

* * *

 

Dave Strider sat alone in his living room. Tendrils of smoke crept from the tip of his smoldering cigarette and wrapped around him. He breathed in the haze. It was like an old, familiar friend. He stayed like this for an hour or so. Then, he rose to his feet to close the door. When he returned to the sofa, he noticed a painting on the coffee table. That odd farmhouse—the one he’d been eyeing—had been left behind.

He sighed and picked it up. He studied it closer. He stared at the ridges of the paint until the perpetual movement of his own blurred vision gave him a headache. And, still, he scrutinized it.

There was something in that painting that he’d long since lost—enthusiasm.

Maybe the loud bastard was right.

After all, he’d spent the last year and a half living two lives. In one universe, he was a famed alternative musician. Yet, in the alternate reality of his home life, he was a washed-up artist with little more to do than complain, smoke, and drink.

Maybe…

A digital melody roared from his phone, interrupting his thoughts. He glanced at the caller identification. It was Rose LaLonde, his half-sister and manager of sorts. With a long, heavy sigh, he picked up the phone. “Yeah. What do you want?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates and all my other bullshit internet antics can be found at [my tumblr](http://tennantstype40.tumblr.com) and feel free to follow.


	3. La mer, la mer, toujours recommencee

_**La mer, la mer, toujours recommencee** _  
_**O récompense après une pensée** _  
_**Qu'un long regard sur le calme des dieux!** _

_The sea, the sea, forever beginning anew_  
_O reward after thought_  
_A long look at the calmness of the gods!_

* * *

 

I didn’t think much about Dave after the incident. I continued to listen to his music, though. It was good music, after all, so there was no use wasting it just because the guy behind it was an asshole. Sure, every now and then a thought about him would pop into my mind, but it would swiftly be carried off by more pressing matters.

So, for ten days, I forgot about what happened.

Then, ten days later, at some point after ten o’clock in the evening, I heard a knock at the door. As I usually would, I flicked on the porch light and looked out the peephole. Through it, I saw him—dressed in a plain black vest and grey trousers—at my doorstep. Half of me wanted to let him stand there. Half of me wanted to see why the hell he was at my house and where the hell he got my address. The latter half of me won.

Despite being in my pajamas and wearing a heavily patched-together bath robe, I opened the door. “What?” I greeted him, “You here to make more snide comments?”

He sighed and fiddled nervously with his cane. “Yeah… About that…”

“About what? You being an asshole?”

A smile flashed across his face. “Yeah, that. I wanted to say I’m sorry about that. I’ve been pretty out of it lately. I mean…” He paused and looked around for a moment. When a strong, cold wind swept past a few seconds later, he continued. “Do you mind if I come in? I mean, I don’t care if you’re not. I get that…”

“Hm?” I considered the idea for a minute. He didn’t seem to pose any sort of threat, and I didn’t really have all that much to lose. “Yeah, sure,” I muttered.

“Cool.” He nodded and stepped carefully over the threshold. For a moment, he stood in the same place—brow furrowed, chewing his lip. “So…” he muttered, turning so that he wasn’t fully facing me. “You live here alone?”

“Yeah. Why?” I shrugged and sat back down on the sofa—where I’d been spread out and ready to fall asleep just moment before.

He paused and looked around. “I… Did you move?”

“Yeah. What’s up with the twenty questions?”

Dave sighed and swept his cane in wide arc in front of him. He carefully made his way over to the sofa where I was sitting and stopped. Then, without any real notice, he pulled a wad of cash from his pocket. “I’d like to make you an offer.”

“What the—?”

I couldn’t finish my question before he cut in. “That’s about a thousand dollars. Do you have an extra room?” At this point, he turned his head so that he wasn’t looking directly at me.

“Yeah. And, again, any reason for this twenty questions game?”

He shrugged. “I—Um… Would you be okay renting the room to me?”

“For what?”

“Living in?” He responded with a hint of a sneer.

I considered the proposal. On one hand, I barely knew this guy—all I knew is that he’s famous and that he’s more than a bit of an asshole. The flipside, though, was that I had a wad of cash equal to one thousand goddamn dollars actually in my other hand. “How long?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” Dave shrugged. “Is that enough for a month, though, because—?” He began to pull another wad of cash from his pocket.

I stopped him. “Fine! Fine! You can stay. Just don’t be such an asshole about everything.”

“I’ll try not to be. So, um… Where’s my room?”

“Directly to your left,” I mumbled, slowly putting the cash into my pocket. “You… um… Do you need anything?”

“No. Not really.” Dave responded as he walked into the spare room. As he crossed beneath the doorframe, he turned and quietly shut the door.

I, meanwhile, wondered exactly what I was doing—what _he_ was doing. After all, he certainly had his own house. But, I couldn’t really complain. It was some extra money for the time being, so it wasn’t exactly terrible.

Still, it would have been nice to know how he got my address in the first place. And, more importantly, why was he at _my_ house? I was certain that he had plenty of other friends, many of whom were undoubtedly richer than me. Why would he want to be at my house, then?

I pondered these questions for a brief moment before deciding that I didn’t care enough to stay up thinking about them. I brushed them aside and stretched out on the sofa, where I proceeded to fall into an uneventful slumber.

* * *

 

An hour and a half after arriving, Dave had a basic grasp of his surroundings. The bed was pushed into the corner to the right of the entrance. To the left of the bed was a small, empty shelving unit. Beside this and in the corner opposite the bed was the dresser. On the back wall was a small window and some rolling clothes racks, and the left side of the room was occupied by a small desk.

He didn’t, however, have any concrete idea of what he was doing. In the most basic sense, he was taking a break. He hadn’t been satisfied with his art for at least a year—although it felt like forever. In a broader sense, however, he had no real reason to be here. Karkat was right, after all. He had a house.

If he was going to be completely honest with himself, he’d have to say that he was there for him—for Karkat. He was there to try and find the passion that he used to have for his music. But, he couldn’t exactly tell Karkat that. It was bad enough that he showed up at his doorstep with no legitimate reason for being there.

He sighed. He put his head in his hands and ran his fingers through his hair.

What was he doing? What the absolute hell was he doing?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The translation for this part of the poem is probably overly literal. If anyone has a better translation, feel free to let me know about it.


	4. Maint diamant d'imperceptible écume

_**Quel pur travail de fins éclairs consume** _   
_**Maint diamant d'imperceptible écume,**_   
_**Et quelle paix semble se concevoir!**_

_What pure work purposes, lightning consumes_  
_Many diamonds of the imperceptible foam,_  
_And what peace seems to be conceived!_

* * *

 

“What are you doing here, anyhow?” I asked Dave as I sprawled out on the sofa.

It was about 2:00pm on Wednesday.

I’d finished my classes for the day and had nothing else left to do. So, out of a combination of necessity and unfortunate circumstance, I wound up talking to Dave. He, erstwhile, was busy playing around with some fucking ugly golden ring adorned with a tiny bejeweled crow.

“Taking a break,” he shrugged.

I responded with a snort of laughter. “From what? Having money flow out of your ass and being an almost-legitimate musical icon.”

A frown showed briefly on his face. “I guess so. I mean, you probably wouldn’t get it.”

“Try me,” I grumbled. I was being sarcastic, but, admittedly, some of me was genuinely interested.

“Life,” he shrugged again.

“What, are you trying to be poetic or something? Is this suddenly some sort of vague acid rock?”

Another shrug. “It gets kind of annoying, y’know?”

“No,” I folded my arms across my chest. If there was any time for me to have the shittiest sort of sarcastic smile on my face, it was now. “I don’t. I know how to raffle my art off to the lowest possible bidder to make my way through school, though.”

“Oh… Yeah…” He stuck the ring he’d been playing with back onto his finger and yawned. “I’m just fed up with all this shit. I mean, it probably sounds stupid to you, doesn’t it?”

“Sort of,” I admitted.

By now, I figured there wasn’t much of a point to picking on him and more than everyone else. He wasn’t a physical threat to me and he _was_ paying me cash to stay in my house. There wasn’t much use in pissing him off besides maybe getting ten seconds of mild amusement. Aside from that, I just naturally tend to sound like an angry bastard regardless of my actual mood.

“So…” Dave began, only to quickly silence himself.

“Look, if you’ve got nothing interesting to do, then I don’t, either.” I shrugged. “Although, I would like to know how the hell you got my address.”

“Oh. I know a friend of yours. He’s…” He paused. He ran his fingers through his hair and chewed at his lip for a moment before continuing, “Not as tall as me but… Loud, obnoxious laugh… Shitty pranks…”

“John?”

“Yeah!” He folded his arms across his chest, though the fact that his glasses covered his eyes prevented me from pinpointing exactly why he was doing that. I assumed it was some outlandish show of confidence. “Him. He knows you.”

“So, then, _why_ did you ask for my address? John knows plenty of people. Why pick me?” I asked.

The question was, after all, completely legitimate. We’d met twice. We barely knew each other. Besides, I was boring. I had nothing interesting to offer him. I was an average college student on a penny-pinching budget. Nothing fancy. Meanwhile, he… Well, he was Dave Strider. He was a celebrity.

So, naturally, his answer surprised me.

“Because you seem so into your art and I’m just so… bleh.” He shook his head and sighed. “Being upfront about it, I’m just so sick of all this music bullshit. I just need to figure out what to do from here.”

“So I’m like one of those plastic stools you buy at Walmart?”

“No! Not that!” Dave practically yelped. “Just, well, I wanted to see if some time off would help and I figured I might as well get as far away from everyone I know as I could.”

“That makes absolutely no sense.”

“Probably not.” He sighed and absentmindedly draped his hand over the back of the couch. His fingers seemed to move of their own accord, tapping out a simple array of beats and rhythms. He turned his head to the side. “Why’d you even let me in? I was an ass to you last time we met.”

I shrugged. “I mainly just wanted to know how you got my address and then you offered me cash.”

He smirked. “So, if you’re the Walmart discount stool, I must be the sucker paying for it?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” I couldn’t help but smile a bit. “So, um…” I paused and thought for a moment. There wasn’t much else for me to do. I didn’t have any homework for the week (at least not yet) and, at this point, I was genuinely curious about this guy. Something about him—a sort of air of intriguing mystery—drew me to him (as cliché as that sounds).

“Yeah?” He folded his hands behind his head and propped his feet up on the armrest.

“Stupid question—” I began.

“I get a lot of those. Can’t be any worse than some of the others.”

“Do you dye your hair?”

Dave snickered briefly. “No. It’s just like that. Kind of sucks, really. I hate it. I’ve tried dyeing it, but it never does much. Grows back pure white and ruins the new color pretty fast.”

I nodded. “So, any questions for me?”

“Not really,” he shrugged.

I accepted his answer pretty easily. There wasn’t much interesting about me or my life. So, really, there wouldn’t be much to talk about.

“So, hey, do you mind if I leave for a while?” Dave asked.

“No,” I shrugged. “Go do whatever. It’s not like you’re locked into staying here all the time.”

“Okay. Cool. I’ll be back at some point.”

I nodded and wandered off to start fixing dinner.

Dave, meanwhile, gathered his things and wandered out the front door.

For a few minutes, I thought about giving him the spare key. I didn’t know when he’d get back, after all. Still, it wasn’t like he’d be out forever. Or, at the very least, I assumed he wouldn’t be up until early the next morning…

* * *

 

Roughly 12:30AM. Thursday.

Dave Strider was drunk.

Now, it wasn’t exactly blackout drunk; but, it wasn’t like he was just a little tipsy, either. He was drunk enough to know where he was and what he was doing, but he wasn’t sober enough to act anywhere near what would be considered baseline human decency.

So, for that reason, he somehow picked a fight with a random bar patron.

Thus, he found himself sprawled out on the floor of some random bar. Soon after realizing this, he found himself thrown out of the bar and sitting on the sidewalk outside. A few minutes later, he was in the back of a cop car.

At the time, he wasn’t aware enough to wonder what exactly would happen when Karkat woke up and found that he hadn’t come home. No, he was just aware enough to feel the sting of an array of broken glass across his back.

He was aware enough to have a tenuous grasp on his thoughts, too.

He was Dave Strider, for one. That was his first though. His second thought was that he vaguely remembered that he had promised his half-sister Rose that he wouldn’t get this drunk again, although it wasn’t like she’d know since he wasn’t staying at his place. His subsequent thoughts were disjointed and varied, although the ones he really held onto revolved around his own feelings of general apathy for his current state and his lack of any semblance of personal shame. Somewhere in those jumbled thoughts, there were also passing mentions of a rapidly diminishing self-worth, though he figured those weren’t exactly important in the grand scheme of current life affairs.


	5. Le temps scintille et le songe est savoir

**_Quand sur l'abîme un soleil se repose,_ **  
_**Ouvrages purs d'une éternelle cause,** _  
_**Le temps scintille et le songe est savoir.** _

_When in the abyss the sun rests,_  
_Pure structures of the eternal cause,_  
_The time sparkles and the dream is knowledge._

* * *

 

Thursday morning. Roughly 9:00am.

I woke up with a phone call from the police station demanding that I come and pick up a hungover Dave Strider.

By 10:00am, he sat next to me on the taxi I’d called to pick us up.

“Hey… Sorry about this, dude,” he mumbled. He kept his head down.

I didn’t respond. I was annoyed enough without his input.

“I’ll pay for the ride…” He grumbled. “Um…”

I continued ignoring him. If it wasn’t for the fact that his payment to stay was a substantial boost to my income, I would have probably just left him at the police station.

“I get it if you’re mad at me…”

I shrugged.

“Okay. I guess that means don’t talk now…?”

I let out an affirmative huff.

The rest of the ride was spent in silence until we were dropped off by my house. By the time we returned, Dave seemed to have finally reached the conclusion that I wasn’t in the mood for talking. He’d since stopped trying to apologize and went inside as silently as I did. He then promptly departed and locked himself in his room.

I, meanwhile, decided to have a chat with the annoying bastard who gave out my address. I sat down at my desk and opened up my shitty old laptop before starting a video chat with a certain asshole by the name of John Egbert.

He responded in less than five minutes. In fact, I could hear his annoying, shitty voice from halfway across the room as I was getting coffee. “Hey! Karkat!”

“Hey, fuckwit,” I grumbled as I rushed back to the table. “I have a question for you.”

“Yeah?” he replied with one of his trademark dorky grins.

“Exactly what in this vast, unyielding comic realm compelled you to give my address to Dave Strider?”

He paused for a moment. “I thought you liked him?”

“I like his music, you dense shit-sucker!” I grumbled. “I don’t like _him_.”

“Oops.” John shrugged. “Well, I thought you two would get along.”

“I literally just came back from picking the bastard up from police holding,” I snapped.

John, being a friend of mind since elementary school, was used to my usual outbursts; he didn’t even flinch at my yelling. “Hey, inside voice, Karkat.”

“I’ll give you an inside voice when I figure out how you thought I would ever get along with this steaming pile of incomprehensible shit!”

Another shrug from John. “You know, you have a lot more in common than you think you do.”

“Like what!?”

“Well… You both have an interest in some of the same things.” As per usual, his characteristic levelheaded response to my outrageous anger started to rub off on me. I could feel myself slowly starting to calm down, albeit only by a small fraction. “Really, he’s not that bad. He just needs a little push, you know?”

I folded my arms across my chest and stared at the cheerful-looking collection of pixels on my screen. “No. I don’t.”

“Well…” John spent a moment or so messing with his hair—something he did whenever he was thinking about what to say—before offering yet another clueless shrug. “Well, you both need someone to hang out with. Neither of you leave the house very much, so I figured it’d be healthy for both of you.”

There was silence on my end.

John took this lull in conversation as a cue to continue. “I can’t really say much more than that, Karkat. That’s kind of private stuff for him to tell you… But give him another chance… Or… Well… You might need to give him a few more than one…”

“He’s paying me, so I’m letting him live in my house. What more do you want? Do you want us to go run off and elope in some far-off fairytale European countryside? I suppose then you’ll come to visit and then we’ll employ you as the court jester?”

John seemed to enjoy my commentary, seeing as he replied with a laugh. “There’s always the possibility. Really, though, just give it a shot. Try talking to him and just hanging out. I’m sure you’ll at least learn to tolerate him.”

“That’s doubtful.”

“You never know.” John smirked. “I’ve got to get going, though, so… Maybe we could meet up for dinner sometime soon?”

“Yeah!” There was no way I could mask my enthusiasm.

Although I often picked on John and used him as my verbal punching bag, I liked him. He was my first friend in elementary school and probably the only one who didn’t go through a phase where he suddenly decided that I was the worst person on the planet. He was one of my closest friends and, because he lived across town, I didn’t see him often. So, any chance to meet up with him was good with me.

“Aw. You do care,” he grinned. “We’ll iron out the details later. See you then, I guess?”

“Yeah. See you then.”

“Great. Later.” With this said, he left.

The other end of the video call went black. A message appeared on the screen to notify me that John had logged off. After closing the window, I pondered John’s idea.

Yes, to be honest, I needed someone to hang out with on a regular basis. All of my other friends had ended up going to non-local colleges, so I rarely saw them. I never really clicked with anyone in any of my classes, so I never hang out with them. Dave, erstwhile, was now going to be at my house for some unspecified duration of time, making him a prime candidate for social interaction.

Yet, on the other hand, he didn’t exactly make the best first impression on me. And he definitely wasn’t making a good one then, either.

Still, there was something in the back of my mind that kept urging me to try and talk to him. Something told me that he had a lot more to him than it seemed, and I was both curious and careless enough to try and figure out what it was that he had to hide…

* * *

 

Having locked himself in the room he was technically renting, Dave Strider proceeded to empty the churning contents of his stomach into the trash can by the door. After relieving himself of that discomfort, he sprawled face-down onto the mattress and tried to recall the events which led up to this.

Last night, he remembered, he was at a local bar. He’d had enough to drink that he had little concern left for if anyone saw him do anything stupid. And, vaguely, he thought he could recall some equally drunken stranger yelling at him about… something. Something. But, what was it?

He closed his eyes and let forth a long sigh.

Something about him… An insult, probably. A clouded memory seemed to flicker in and out of his mind’s reach. Eventually, after a good deal of trying to think about what exactly prompted the fight, he moved on to what actually happened. After all, there was nothing to learn from just knowing what sort of asinine commentary sparked his inner rage.

Yes, the cause was irrelevant. The more pressing matter was what had happened in that fight. Why did every part of him ache?

Vague memories bled into his foremost thoughts like a drop of ink snaking its way through a glass of water. He had thrown a random punch at the stranger. He missed. There might have been some laughter from the other late-night patrons of the bar. He wasn’t too sure of that detail. But the stranger most definitely retaliated with a punch of his own. From there, though, the recollections got fuzzier. More punches were thrown. Someone’s glass of alcohol shattered on the floor. At some point, he managed to step on what he could only assume was wet trash and slipped. He fell, got thrown out of the bar, and ended up in a police car.

That, however, was about all he could remember. After being thrown into the car, the blurred memories simply stopped forming.

Really, though, there was no use in trying to remember. Someone probably already alerted the media about his drunken brawl. Hell, for all he knew, there was full length footage of the scuffle. He didn’t really care much. There was nothing he could do to stop it.

So, with those thoughts on his mind, Dave slowly drifted off into a restless slumber.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone's enjoying the fic so far. It's a bit experimental and I'm really just toying around with some ideas. Comments, feedback, and pointing outs of my poorly beta'ed mistakes are greatly appreciated. Thanks for reading!


	6. Stable trésor, temple simple à Minerve

**_Stable trésor, temple simple à Minerve,_ **   
**_Masse de calme, et visible réserve,_ **   
**_Eau sourcilleuse, Œil qui gardes en toi…_ **

_Sure treasure, a simple temple to Minerva,_  
_Mass calm and visible reserve,_  
 _Water supercilious, eye who guards you…_

* * *

 

Seeing as I had neither classes nor a job to attend to on Fridays, I usually spent the morning sleeping in late. So, naturally, I was surprised when I woke up to the smell of some sort of pancakes tinged with the slightest odor of smoke. I wandered out into the main living area, where I found Dave sprawled out on the floor with a plate of pancakes resting on his stomach.

“Oh. Hey,” he stopped shoveling pancakes into his mouth long enough to speak to me, “I made these for you. Sort of as an apology for yesterday. But you were asleep and they smelled really good and… Well… There’s five left…?” As if to convince me of his deeply cemented guilt, he punctuated his statement with a sheepish grin.

“Okay.” I stood above him with my arms folded across my chest. Half of me wanted to admit that they did smell passably edible. The other half of me wanted to know how the hell he even knew where I kept everything—honestly, even I didn’t know where all my supplies were. I decided to split down the middle and took a pancake from the plate. Seeing as I didn’t feel like getting a fork, I rolled it into a doughy burrito and started eating. “How did you even know where all of this was?” I asked about halfway through.

“I didn’t,” he admitted. “I went to the grocery store and bought them when you went to sleep.” Having said this, he shrugged and offered me another pancake. I took it as he continued with his story, saying, “Well… Not really grocery store. More like a 7/11. But it’s about the same thing. And it’s open all day long, so…”

“You walked to 7/11 purely to make apology pancakes?” I asked. “The ones you’re shoving in your disgusting mouth right now?”

“Yes!” He responded whole-heartedly. Then, after a few seconds pause, he shrugged and added, “Well, maybe I wanted a Slurpee, too, but the trip was intended as a purely altruistic good deed.”

With a slow nod, I finished my second pancake and grabbed my third and final serving before wandering over to the sofa. “Well, I guess I should go put on celebratory party hats since you didn’t end up in police holding this time,” I grumbled.

“So, hey, why do you sleep on the couch? Isn’t there a spare room?” Dave asked, shoveling another pancake into his mouth.

“Why do you want to know?” I grumbled.

“Just curious.” He shrugged. “I mean, don’t answer if you don’t want to. It’s all cool.”

I breathed a short contemplative sigh.

Perhaps John was right. As much as I hated to ever admit that that butterfingered pranking asshole was even right in the first place, I had to say that he was. After talking with Dave, he seemed closer to the person he was on stage. He was a lot friendlier than I’d initially thought he was. Still, I barely knew him. There wasn’t any good reason to tell him much more than I had to.

“No, not really,” I finally replied. “Maybe some time later, but not now. I barely know you and yet, for some goddamn anomalous reason, you’re on my floor eating pancakes.”

He responded to me with a smirk. “Well, you’re not really telling me to stop.”

I opened my mouth to return a snide comment of my own, though I was silenced by the surprising amount of what was more-or-less logic in the statement. “Okay, fine.”

“Exactly.” He finished the final pancake, put the plate on the nearby coffee table, and dusted himself off before springing to his feet. “So, hey, sorry for yesterday. Really, I am. That was pretty jerkass-ish of me, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“So, hey, new idea. We forget all the shit that’s happened and try starting over from here?”

I shrugged. There was no real harm in refusing. If it didn’t work out, he’d be out of my house and I’d just have to find somewhere else to get money. “Deal.”

“Cool.” He nodded and shoved his hands in his pockets. “So… Um…” His voice trailed off. He tilted his head downwards a bit and chewed his lip. He absentmindedly tapped his left foot to the beat of some inaudible music that I could only assume played somewhere in the back of his mind. “Do your parents live anywhere nearby?”

“Nope.” I responded tersely. “They’re dead.”

“Oh…” His cheeks reddened a bit. “Sorry…”

“That’s fine,” I shrugged. “So, what is this? Your facsimile of an idea of small talk? Some sort of bastardized version of the all-expense-paid embarrassment that is a traditional icebreaker?”

He offered me a halfhearted shrug. “I don’t know…” He sighed. There was a brief lull in the conversation. For the first time, I noticed a long, thin scar which ran at a slight diagonal from just above his right ear to the edge of his jawline. I only had enough time to catch a brief glimpse of it, though, as he suddenly continued his thoughts. “Sorry about the question… If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t know my parents very well…”

“I don’t really care either way,” I answered honestly.

Another shrug. He wandered over to the armchair across from the sofa and sat down.

For a long while, a dense silence hung in the air. It wasn’t exactly dense in the sense that it was oppressive. Rather, it was more like there was some sort of tension—not exactly aggressive, though—between the two of us. I didn’t pay much attention to it, really. In fact, after about ten minutes of silence, I gathered my books and began researching for a recently assigned paper.

The silence lasted about two hours. Dave spent the entire time seemingly lost in thought. However, when the silence ended, it ended abruptly. He seemed to perk up within seconds and he honestly scared me shitless when he spoke up again without any prior warning.

“Seeing as I ate your pancakes would you… Maybe… Be interested in going to dinner somewhere? I’ll pay. I’ve got the cash.”

I looked up from my work long enough to notice that his posturing was far less confident than before. Whereas he’d been standing up straight and with an air of self-importance before, he was slouched slightly and fidgeting erratically. I didn’t bring that to his attention, though—that would probably only freak him out. Instead, I ignored his sudden shift in disposition and answered casually. “Yeah. Sure. When?”

“Tomorrow, maybe?”

“Yeah, that sounds good. There’s a few fast food places down the street we can go to.”

“Okay…” he mumbled. “Sounds good.”

“Great. Now, can I finish my research or do you want to talk again?”

“Not really.” He shrugged.

I nodded in response and returned to my work.

* * *

 

Dave spent the rest of the night wandering around and getting a general feel for the house. He fine-tuned his overall understanding of the building down to a few more specific points.

Firstly, the main bedroom was unoccupied and had an attached bathroom. The building was, itself, a simple one-story rancher. More like a mobile home, perhaps, as far as layout and style went. It had what he assumed was a pull-down stairway to the attic, seeing as he kept bumping into some sort of dangling rope in the hallway, and was probably made as a simple three-to-four person family house.

But, honestly, the house wasn’t what was on his mind.

No, what he was thinking about was Karkat—the loud-mouthed, irritable older teen who’d taken him in. By his own estimate—judging from voice and what little visible information he’d gathered of him—he was at least a year younger than he, Dave Strider, was. Karkat also seemed to be an inch or so shorter. What really interested Dave, though, was Karkat’s personality.

There was something there—beneath the scathing offhanded remarks and colorful linguistics—that captivated him. Something that made him want to talk to him but say absolutely nothing just to see what sort of off-the-wall response he could illicit. There was an extra bite to his voice that seemed to stem from a deep-set drive to be something more than he was. And those things appealed to Dave.

Now, Dave reasoned, if he could only find out how to catch Karkat’s interest in a similar way, then maybe he’d find something to make him feel more for his music than he did. Maybe he’d find a rekindled spark of artistic passion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not translating any more of the poem from now on. sorry. I thought it would be nice practice for me but I have no idea what they're saying. The original poem link (in the original descriptions) has an actually decent English translation.


	7. Tant de sommeil sous une voile de flamme

_**Tant de sommeil sous une voile de flamme,** _  
_**O mon silence! . . . Édifice dans l'ame,** _  
_**Mais comble d'or aux mille tuiles, Toit!** _

* * *

 

We sat in the back of a sort of hole-in-the-wall hangout-type place.

It wasn’t exactly big—hell, it was pretty damned small—but it was cozy. Nothing fancy, either.

The walls were adorned with enough old-timey photos and vintage posters for me to consider the framed images about the same as wallpaper—which I doubt they could possibly have underneath all that crap, anyhow. Somewhere near the front of the building and unfortunately staring straight at me was also an unnervingly large signed image of Guy Fieri.

Despite the fact that smoking was banned in the building, the surroundings still smelled faintly of tobacco. The space would, perhaps, be claustrophobic to some. It was loud and chaotic and the people watching a football game on the tiny behind-the-bar television weren’t making it any quieter.  While I didn’t feel trapped, I certainly felt a bit overwhelmed by the constant noise.

Dave, however, seemed perfectly content. I assumed that was probably because of his lifestyle. He had to be used to crowds and noise, after all. In fact, he seemed a whole lot more comfortable there than he did in the relative silence of my borderline-suburban home. He was seated across from me, and he acted as if there was no one else even in the restaurant. His phone hovered a few inches above the menu and he seemed to be reading it by magnifying it with the cell phone camera.

After a brief silence, he spoke up. His voice seemed to naturally carry itself over the noise of the crowd. “So, what’re you getting?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Why?”

“Just wondering.” He stopped scanning the page for a moment before hitting the phone’s lock button and shoving it back into his pocket. “I think I’ll get a burger.”

After a moment of skimming through the choices, I pinpointed my meal, too. “Hot dogs for me.”

A few minutes later, the waitress arrived. She took out orders and scurried back to the kitchen with a tray of dirty dishes and out orders in hand.

After a few minutes of silence, I tried to strike up some conversation. “So… Has anyone been asking where you are? I mean, someone had to notice you left…” I pointed out.

He shrugged. “My manager’s technically Rose. She’s my older half-sister so she doesn’t really care too much if I go missing. She knows I can take care of myself. I’m not going to fall off the face of the planet, anyhow.”

“But won’t they be worried? Or… Wouldn’t she be worried?” I asked. “I mean, it’s been four days. Wouldn’t they at least let someone know?”

He offered another apathetic shrug in response. “I don’t see what you’re trying to get at here. Why would they be worried? I’m a grown-ass man of legal drinking age. I have my own life and Rose knows that. The only person I can think of who’d be concerned is Kanaya and she wouldn’t be worried long enough to do anything more than maybe pick up a phone and put it back down again.”

“I mean,” he continued to speak in an almost unnervingly calm tone, “If it’s the whole legally blind deal, I can take care of myself. I don’t go walking out into traffic every other minute, if that’s what you’re implying.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” I corrected him quickly, before he could continue any further.

Dave, erstwhile, seemed to be far beyond the point of actually caring about the apparent implication of my question. In fact, he even cracked a wry smile. “Yeah, I know. I’m just saying that that’s a topic. Maybe somewhere in the back of your head you were thinking it, anyhow.” He shrugged.

At around this point, the waitress from before appeared with our food.

Dave immediately dove in.

I, however, was more hesitant.

I mulled over what he’d said. Maybe it was true. Maybe I did think that somewhere deep within my unconscious mind. I didn’t consciously mean it that way, though. And, honestly, it felt like he was passive-aggressively accosting me for my question. Not in an aggressive way, though, but in a manner that bothered me to some extent.

“If my question bothered you, you didn’t have to answer, you know,” I eventually managed to mumble.

Dave looked towards me for a second before taking another bite of his burger. By now, he was almost halfway done. “No, really, it didn’t,” he mumbled through a mouthful of beef before actually swallowing. “I was just giving you a rough time about it.”

I nodded. I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant by that, but I was at least assured that he didn’t take it personally. His intention for goading me about it, though, confused me. I decided to ignore that, though, seeing as he was almost halfway done and I had two hot dogs to finish.

There was a strangely comforting silence between us for about ten minutes afterwards. By then, Dave had finished his meal and I was halfway finished mine.

“Do you mind if I walk outside for a minute?” Dave broke the silence with his inquiry.

“No, not really.” I shrugged and took a bite of a fry.

“Cool. I need a smoke.” Dave rose to his feet and dropped about thirty dollars on the table. “That should cover dinner, right?”

“Yeah, probably.”

He nodded and made his way through the crowd without much work.

I stayed behind and finished my meal.

* * *

 

Dave Strider stood outside of what he guessed would be considered a dive bar. In one hand he held a bright red cigarette lighter. His other hand was shoved deep in his pocket, searching. Eventually, it grazed the film-like plastic wrap around the carton of cigarettes. He pulled the carton out, fished out one, and stuck it in his mouth before lighting it.

For a few minutes he simply leaned against the wall to the right of the doorway and thought about things.

What was he still doing here? Nothing was changing, after all. There were no sudden bursts of inspiration in the near future, at the very least. He wasn’t really doing anything, either. Was he just using this as a way to escape from what had become an increasingly annoying lifestyle?

And why had he become so disenchanted with his life, anyhow?

He used to love the late nights. He loved the thrill of the crowd—however big or small. He loved knowing that people enjoyed what he wrote—his music and thoughts and dreams. He used to feel like he was sharing part of himself with the world and, then, it just stopped. One day he showed up for a performance and couldn’t stand the noise. He couldn’t stand the crowd—a single leering mass of people looking at him and judging him.

Why?

As he pondered this, the door swung open. The faint smell of old books and assorted herbs passed by.

“You going to stand there are suck on that carcinogenic roll of paper and shit all day or are we going?” inquired a voice he was growing increasingly fonder of.

“I guess we could go.” Dave shrugged, following Karkat to the street corner where they met the taxi Karkat had called in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry. i gave up trying to translate. there's a link in chapter one to the poem and a translation.


End file.
